Anthony from Linus Tech Tips reviewed the PinePhone:
He concludes with this statement:
It’s a lot better than the Librem phone. After having a little bit of time with this phone, I can tell you that the Librem was kind of trash.
Obviously Anthony hasn’t spent much time with the two phones, and isn’t doing a detailed comparison. First of all, the PinePhone Community Edition: Mobian and Librem 5 are both using the same Phosh mobile interface (which was developed by Purism) and both are based on Debian. Both phones have similar software above the kernel level (Mobian is based on bullseye and the Librem 5 that Anthony reviewed 2 months ago was based on buster), so if the Librem 5 is “kind of trash”, then the PP Mobian is also “kind of trash.” The Mobian developers Evangelos Ribeiro Tzaras (devrtz) and Arnaud Ferraris (a-wai) collaborate closely with the Purism developers to develop Phosh. See: Evangelos Ribeiro Tzaras · GitLab, Arnaud Ferraris · GitLab
70% of PinePhone users say that they use Phosh on their phone, and 65% say that Phosh is their favorite interface. See: Frequently Asked Questions · Wiki · Librem5 / Librem 5 Community Wiki · GitLab, Poll: What is your favorite distro/interface for the PinePhone?
Only 18% say that Plasma Mobile and 18% say that Lomiri (Ubuntu Touch) is their favorite interface, so I suspect that Anthony hasn’t spent enough time with the PinePhone to see the problems with Plasma Mobile and Lomiri. Plasma Mobile is less complete than Phosh, and the code of Lomiri is not well maintained since it was abandoned by Canonical in May 2017. It has received only 112 commits in the last year. See: Commits · ubports/unity8 · GitHub
Most people who have tried the two phones side by side says that the Librem 5 running Phosh is significantly smoother and faster than the PinePhone running Phosh, and that is reflected in the benchmarks of the two phones. The Librem 5 scores 30%-40% better at integer operations, 50% better at floating point operations and 140% better at OpenGL. See: Benchmarks · Wiki · Librem5 / Librem 5 Community Wiki · GitLab People also say that the Librem 5 screen looks better and brighter than the PinePhone screen.
Now Anthony has a point if he makes the argument that the PinePhone is better because its camera actually works and it has working suspend-to-RAM, which gives it good enough battery life to actually be usable as an every day phone, but Anthony didn’t say that was why the Librem 5 was “kind of trash”. Instead he leaves the impression that the PinePhone is a better phone. Most people who have used both phones disagree. They also know that camera support is coming on the Librem 5 and they have seen the battery life improvements, so they don’t think that the Librem 5 is going to be at its current state for very long.
Honestly, Anthony is doing a disservice to the Linux community but not taking the time to do real reviews, rather than half-assed unboxing videos based on initial impressions. If he had used the PinePhone for any amount of time, he would have discovered the problems with the Quectel modem drivers not waking up the system fast enough when suspended, so people were missing calls. He would have compared the amount of time to open apps between the Librem 5 and PinePhone and discovered that the Librem 5 has significantly faster RAM, which effects its speed at loading apps.
There are reasons to argue that the PinePhone is better than the Librem 5, such as lower price, slimmer form factor, lighter, support for more distros, more choice of interfaces/mobile environments, supporting community-based development, working cameras, working suspend-to-RAM, full disk encryption wizard in postmarketOS and Mobian, etc. Likewise, you can make the argument that the Librem 5 is better because it has a better CPU, GPU and VPU, it uses a RAM standard which is 2.4 times faster, its USB-C port is 4 times faster, it supports 4K@60 video out vs 1080p@60 on the PinePhone, and its 13/8 MP cameras have much higher resolution than the 5/2 MP cameras in the PinePhone.
Anthony, however, didn’t bother explaining any of that, which is why I consider his review to be a waste of time.